ceebmoj, your negative attitude is rather clear so I'd be a fool to indulge you. do you have a webpage with your car? is it a trike? I'd guess the reason it weighs so relatively much is that it's made with car parts that are sized for the ton+ level. A typical set of car wheels weighs as much as my entire concept car.

Would you care to put some actual real numbers with these claims? Do you have a weight for your car or did you put it on one end of a seesaw and a set of car wheels on the other? From my memory the last time I handled them, the wheels on my car are somewhere between 80kg and 100kg. Is your car in this range? Are you afraid that if you tell us what weight it is that you will be giving away valuable trade secrets? If you'll go that far, perhaps you could stretch yourself to tell us how long, wide and high it is as well? What is the range on a full tank/battery? What is the top speed? How much does it cost? Any damn idiot can write a piece of fiction about a wonderful invention. I believe that's all you are doing.

And as for writing a raytracing program... Big deal... I wrote one of those for kicks when I was in college. I think it took me about 3 days. There are dozens of free software projects out there that do the same thing. And even if you did write it yourself, even if it's the best ray tracer in the world ever, knowing some basic trigonometry doesn't qualify you to design a car.

And back to the root purpose of this thread. John Carmack or any of the AA employees do not work for you. You do not pay them to listen to your rubbish, so they are free to ignore it, even pretend you don't exist if they wish. Until they try to raise some public funding and you have the means to provide it, they do not owe you anything, no explanations, no promises, no deadlines, nothing. Just because AA provide the public with more insight into the development of their vehicles than any other rocket company, doesn't mean that they are obliged to do that. They continue to do so despite the fact that this policy seems to attract crackpots like you who wish to harass their employees in public forums.

Do us all a favor, go back to your garage and finish building your car. You'll be doing yourself a favor too. You might learn the difference between theory and practice.

johno

ps, what the hell is a lean orbit anyway? I've never heard the term before, so I googled it and the first 2 hits were this thread. Another danish invention I suppose.

or perhaps you could tell me in your own words what diffraction limit means and how it pertains to a telescope?since I am so obviously inferior to you that you can so harshly judge me, it should be easy to you.

or perhaps I'm the kind of nutcase that knows a lot and gets things right all the time

I know lots of programmers who live in their own world, seems you're one of them. And btw, there are lots of game programmers on this forum, including myself who can create such a renderer, and with that I mean without using DirectX, OpenGL, or any 3D engine, etc, while it requires coding skills, it's not one of the most difficult things to do. And Dan, you can't apply the way you code to rockets or cars for example, that's "real life"

And about electrical cars, I studied Industrial Electricity, creating an electrical car is not one of the hardest things to do, the hard part is making something useful, safe, affordable, and better than the competition, and there are lots of schools who have projects with a lot more advanced concepts and actual working electrical cars than you have.

And as I'm also originally a programmer, lets talk about social skills, I organized an event for more than 1k people (and btw, got lots of subsidies from the city of Rotterdam for it, which is not even in my own country ), spoke an hour before the European parliament, handled a resolution in the Flemish Parliament, leaded the local trade organization for several months as a care taking position representing majority of the Benelux Game Development studios, etc.. And that's beside the games and other products my company released. What about you ?

I wasn't aware of the funny rocket ship, fair enough, but perhaps also fair to say that you gave it up and didn't pursue it until RRL. I will have to admit though that the fishbowl design would be quite a trip : )that's certainly going to create some publicitity and even though ultimate wont change much directly it should raise some significant awareness. I can only imagine the flack I would get though if you had chosen unmanned orbital and I suggested manned suborbital because of the fairly real risks involved.

I would have liked to have seen John's plans for launching a light telescope but just in case he hasn't considered it seriously, could you ask him (sincerely, not as a dick) what he thinks is the difficultty and commercial potential of launching an ultra light telescope to orbit? say a 50cm mirror. be sure to ask him about the resolution on the ground with such a mirror. he will know what it means.let's say 10kg payload, what would be the rocket mass? if he has already considered this he should have the payload and rocket masses already. fair enough?

I would have liked to have seen John's plans for launching a light telescope but just in case he hasn't considered it seriously, could you ask him (sincerely, not as a dick) what he thinks is the difficultty and commercial potential of launching an ultra light telescope to orbit? say a 50cm mirror. be sure to ask him about the resolution on the ground with such a mirror. he will know what it means.

I have to wonder, have you ever built a 50 cm telescope? You seem really interested in them.

Dan Frederiksen wrote:

let's say 10kg payload, what would be the rocket mass?

1000 kg, fully fueled, of which 900 kg is fuel. That's not the vehicle class that AA has now. It uses different structural materials to achieve light weight.

Dan Frederiksen wrote:

if he has already considered this he should have the payload and rocket masses already. fair enough?

"1000 kg, fully fueled, of which 900 kg is fuel. That's not the vehicle class that AA has now. It uses different structural materials to achieve light weight. "

Pooua, that's an interesting value. let's assume for a second you know what you are talking about.

That's a dangerous assumption, but I will say that I believe these numbers are about the minimum ratios and weights that can be achieved by using current chemical fuels. The question is whether current structural and mechanical materials are capable of reaching this minimum, though I believe the answer is that it is currently possible, using top-quality aeronautical materials. I'm cribbing off the notes from the DC-X "Delta Clipper" team.

Dan Frederiksen wrote:

and what's the heaviest AA vehicle flown to date?

I don't know. I don't even know the weight or mass of the structure they flew last Saturday. Eyeballing it, I would guess the Scorpius was somewhere around 225 kg, from the way it swung on the chain while the team moved it. Fuel and oxidizer probably increased it's weight about 50%. Of course, those are rough guesses on my part. I'm sure one could look up the actual values. But, again, so what? AA was trying to win the LLC II prize, and they qualify for it. No one else has, as far as I've heard. The team is making excellent progress.

sigurd, since it's obviously more advanced than my concept, is it production ready? affordable? something you would drive on the road? do a bit of grocery shopping in? hmm? drive at night?

No, neither is yours, that's custom build for the challenge (clear purpose) and to test this new technologies to later on use in other vehicles. Commercial companies often license this IP/Technology, therefor this is useful, as it's not just build by components available in a store or on the Internet.

culture wrote:

Damn, the Belgians are taking over ... i thought it was us who were taking over

Or my company, myself and the people I work with are just not acting like other Belgian people do Most of my business partners are from the Netherlands anyway

I would have liked to have seen John's plans for launching a light telescope but just in case he hasn't considered it seriously, could you ask him (sincerely, not as a dick) what he thinks is the difficultty and commercial potential of launching an ultra light telescope to orbit? say a 50cm mirror. be sure to ask him about the resolution on the ground with such a mirror. he will know what it means.

Dan, you are only displaying more and more ignorance of the topics you keep talking about. I know someone like you in real life and sometimes it's painful to watch him making such a fool out of himself. Despite what I wrote earlier, explaining why nobody owes you any kind of explanation about anything, you are still here, stamping your foot like a spoiled child. You are still managing to insult peoples intelligence in 1 sentence and immediately ask them to help you by providing information in the following sentence. I assume that people are still responding out of some kind of sympathetic pity reflex reaction. That's certainly what I'm feeling for you right now. If you want to know the resolving power of a 50 cm telescope, go and read about it on the internet. Here's a link to get you started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolutionSince you write your own raytracing software, I'm sure you'll have no problem calculating meters of resolution from LEO. (hints: wavelength of visible light is about 400nm-700nm, LEO is about 300km-400km, and you'll need to use arctan)

johno

ps, and the aperture of a 50cm telescope is 50cm

Last edited by johno on Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

According to last years NGLLC page the quad was 2250lbs fully loaded. It does not have anywhere near the mass fractions you are talking about though.

Neither did the DC-X. The author of the booklet I read said this was one of the arguments that people made against their goal of SSTO. The DC-X team agreed that it would be necessary to have a mass fraction of 10% vehicle/90% fuel to achieve orbit, but pointed out that a few rockets actually already had that fraction. Even so, this fraction is at the edge of technology, using the best materials available. The DC-X would never have it; the DC-XA might come close. The full scale version would have, had it been built.

Pooua, the quad is actually heavier than your estimate for an orbital vehicle...

and Johno, I know the resolution limit of a 50cm mirror. I've stated it a couple of times in this thread. You would know had you paid attention. I didn't suggest they check it because I wanted to know. I asked so that they could know as well.